Jerusalem Religious Power and Judaism Moses Mendelssohn Copyright © Jonathan Bennett 2017. All rights reserved [Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots· enclose material that has been added, but can be read as though it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations, are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis . indicates the omission of a brief passage that seems to present more difficulty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reported between brackets in normal-sized type. – When a sentence (like this one) is preceded by – followed by a space, that is supplied by Mendelssohn, who uses it as a kind of quasi-paragraph-break. The division into subsections with titles is added in this version. So are the titles of the two Sections, though they are obviously what Mendelssohn intended. Many occurrences of italics are added in this version, to aid comprehension; but a remarkable number of them are Mendelssohn’s. First launched: June 2011 Contents SECTION I: RELIGIOUS POWER 1 1. Some history of our problem....................................................1 2. State and religion: general points................................................5 3. What rights are...........................................................9 4. Benevolence and beneficence................................................... 10 5. Rights and duties in the state of nature............................................. 10 6. Parents and children......................................................... 11 7. Marriage............................................................... 12 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 8. Transfer of goods.......................................................... 13 9. An analysis of promising..................................................... 15 10. Nonsense about duties towards God.............................................. 16 11. Church and state: actions..................................................... 17 12. Church and state: thoughts................................................... 18 13. Church government. Oaths................................................... 19 14. Beliefs as requirements for office................................................. 21 15. Summary of Section I...................................................... 23 16. Excommunication........................................................ 25 SECTION II: JUDAISM 27 1. Some good people.......................................................... 27 2. A reviewer who missed the point................................................. 28 3. Fidelity to the Mosaic religion................................................... 31 4. Judaism and Christianity..................................................... 32 5. Revealed religion........................................................... 34 6. Mankind and progress........................................................ 37 7. More about revelation....................................................... 38 8. Speaking versus writing....................................................... 41 9. Abstraction and signs....................................................... 42 10. The invention of alphabets.................................................... 44 11. Uses and misuses of language................................................. 46 12. How idolatry began........................................................ 46 13. How to think about a foreign religion.............................................. 47 14. The failed Pythagorean attempt................................................. 49 15. The purpose of Jewish ceremonial law............................................. 50 16. God’s power, God’s love..................................................... 52 17. God’s punishments........................................................ 53 18. A summary account of early Judaism............................................. 55 19. Judaism and civil law...................................................... 58 20. The unity trap........................................................... 60 Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn Glossary beliefs: This is usually a translation of Gesinnungen. See science: In early modern times this word applied to any body also thoughts and frames of mind. The choice among these of knowledge or theory that is (perhaps) axiomatised and three translations is dictated by context. (certainly) conceptually highly organised. That is what lies behind Mendelssohn’s implying on page 40 that Maimonides benevolence: Most occurrences of this in the present ver- wanted religion to be one of the ‘sciences’. sion would go better with ‘beneficence’ (i.e. doing good rather than merely wanting to do good); but if this is a mistake it is Sitten: A plural noun that can be translated by a variety Mendelssohn’s, because there’s no other possible translation of English words, which boil down to something like ‘a of his Wohlwollen. people’s morality, basic customs, ingrained attitudes and expectations about how people will behave, ideas about what Children of Israel: The Jewish people. is decent etc. or any subset of those’. It is left untranslated eternal: See entry on ‘temporal’. here because no good English word does that job. frames of mind: This translates Gesinnungen. See also temporal: It means ‘having to do with this world as distinct beliefs and thoughts. On page5 all three translations of from the heavenly world of the after-life’. The underlying the word occur within a couple of consecutive paragraphs. thought is that this world is in time (‘temporal’) whereas the after-life is eternal in some way that puts it outside time. House of Jacob: The Jewish people. These English words had those meanings at the time when luxury: This meant something like: extreme or inordinate Mendelssohn wrote, and they are inevitable translations of indulgence in sensual pleasures. A ‘luxurious’ person was his zeitlich and ewig. Note that on page4 Mendelssohn someone wholly given to the pleasures of the senses—-mostly clearly implies that what is eternal is in time. but not exclusively the pleasures of eating and drinking. thoughts: This is usually a translation of Gesinnungen, a moral person: An entity that counts as a person in the word with a very broad meaning. See also beliefs and frames context of rights, wrongs, blame, and so on. of mind. Jerusalem Moses Mendelssohn 1. Some history of our problem SECTION I: RELIGIOUS POWER 1. Some history of our problem Despotism has the advantage of being consistent. How- ever oppressive its demands may look from a common- One of the most difficult tasks of political theory concerns: sense point of view, they are coherent and systematic. For •state and religion, every question it has its settled answer: ‘Stop worrying •civil and ecclesiastical constitution, about borders—he who has everything no longer asks “How •secular and churchly authority. much?”.’ Similarly with ecclesiastical government on Roman Catholic principles: it can deal with every detail in every The task is to relate these pillars of social life to one another state of affairs, and yet it is as it were all of a piece. Grant in such a way that they are in balance, rather than becoming all its demands, and you’ll at least know where you stand. burdens on social life or weighing down its foundations more Your structure is completely built, and perfect calm reigns than they help to uphold it. Men have struggled with this throughout. Admittedly it’s only the dreadful calm which, as for centuries, occasionally getting somewhere with it—but Montesquieu says, prevails during the evening in a fortress only in practical settlements rather than any theoretical that will be taken by storm during the night. Yet anyone solution. Some thought it right to separate these different for whom happiness is tranquility in doctrine and life won’t relations of social man into ·two· moral entities—·one for find a better guarantee of it than under •a Roman Catholic the items on the left, the other for those on the right·—and despot (or rather under •the despotic rule of the church itself, to assign to each its own province, specific rights, duties, because with any other despot, even a Roman Catholic one, powers, and properties. But the extent of these provinces there will still be issues about the secular/ecclesiastical and the boundary dividing them haven’t yet been accurately borderline). [The parenthetical part of that sentence expands an fixed. [Mendelssohn write ‘boundaries’, but the singular seems better extremely compressed clause of Mendelssohn’s.] because he is evidently thinking in terms of only two ‘provinces’.] Some- times we see •the church moving the boundary-marker deep But as soon as freedom dares to move any of the pieces in into the territory of the state; sometimes we see •the state this systematic structure, ruin immediately threatens on all allowing itself encroachments that seem equally violent. sides; and it’s no longer clear what is going to survive all this. Immeasurable evils have already arisen, and threaten to Hence the extraordinary confusion—the civil disturbances arise again, from the quarrel between these ‘moral entities’. as well as ecclesiastical ones—during the early years of the When they go to battle against each other, mankind is the Reformation, and the conspicuous embarrassment of the loser; when they are in agreement, the jewel in the crown of teachers and reformers themselves